Poet and journalist Mahmooda Taqwa has been able to put poverty behind her with hard work and perseverance. Her life story.
Born in Kabul in 1988, she was seven years old when the war engulfed the city and she fled with her family to her father’s village, Doaab of Tangi in Sayed Abad district, Maidan Wardak province.
Her father who had lost his job had to divide the land and house amongst his brothers. The siblings got one room and 8 beswa (800 square metres) each as their share.
“We had one room that we used to sleep in, eat, stack the wood and other necessary things and cook,” she says.
A school came up a little away from the village and the family decided Taqwa would go to school. “The school was far from our house,” she says, “and other girls were not going to school. I had to go alone.”
Once she was accosted by a group of Tablighis (religious preachers). “They stopped me and asked where I was going. When I said I was going to school, they told me, don’t I have a father, and doesn’t he have a shred of honour that he is sending his daughter to school? I kept my silence. Then they asked if I can recite from the Holy Quran. I immediately said yes, and recited the whole Surah of Al Rahman that I had memorised by heart. I recited it to them in fear. But they looked at each other, it seemed they felt ashamed, and moved on.”
The villagers were also against Taqwa going to school, and would taunt and call her “khalqi” (communist) even though “my father was only a teacher in Kabul”, she says. She remembers she was “always alone”. “My family would not let me mix with the girls in the village, saying they were uneducated while the parents of the girls in the village told them not to talk to me since I was from the city so I was always alone.”
Her schooling, however, was interrupted one summer when the river flooded, and she fell off the bridge into the grey water. Fortunately, her brother who was working in the fields saw her, and pulled her out of the raging stream. The family felt she should not be allowed to go alone to school anymore. The school sent her exam papers home to show what a good student she was but her father was adamant.
Great hardship
Taqwa remembers those days were of great hardship with the family barely surviving. She had to graze the cattle and goats, fetch fodder, and collect leaves from trees that grew on the side of the river, which the family would dry to burn as fuel.
“I grazed the goats for some nine years,” she says.
One day misfortune struck. One of the goats entered a garden in the village, and that family complained to her father who beat her a lot.
Things started looking up only when two of her much older brothers went to Denmark. They found work and regularly sent some money home.
Another one of her brother’s moved to Kabul along with his family.
In end-2001, the Taleban regime was ousted, and with it girls’ schools reopened in the Afghan capital, and elsewhere. Taqwa, now 15, was keen to resume her interrupted education but she did know how to broach the subject with her family. One day she told her sister that if she would be allowed to study she would become a doctor and treat her when she gets sick. “I asked my elder sister to tell my father to send me to my brother’s house in Kabul. My father felt the time for studies was over but I insisted, and I went to Kabul.”
Taqwa applied to join grade four but the school in Kala Kasehf of Campani only had grades two, three and seven. “I was in a fix about what to do. There was no other school near the house. On the advise of some relatives I applied for grade seven. I was worried because my spellings were poor. But it will forever be a puzzle that I was admitted, and started in class seven in 2002.”
Taqwa’s classmates were good in studies. She thinks this was probably because they continued to study at home through the Taleban years. Her teacher was not at all patient and willing to help. “The teacher beat me for my spelling. She showed my spell sheet to the other students, and they all laughed at me. I was very ashamed. With Dari as the language of instruction, which language I could not read even one word, I was in real trouble.”
One day when Taqwa went home crying her father was visiting from the village. He insisted she should go back with him and help her mother in the house. “I said I would study.” The odds were huge. She says, “There were nine girls in my class. The room in which we were sitting had only half a ceiling – it was a ruin. I did not know any of the other girls. I was a girl from the village. My hands were cracked. My clothes were shabby unlike the others.”
Persistence pays
Her life was about to change. One day the religious teacher got Taqwa to recite from the Holy Quran, and told her to teach the class. “After that I became the teacher of Holy Quran. My classmates did not like that and would not pay attention but gradually there came a change. In one month I was speaking Dari. I found a black dress, and wore it to school with a white shawl. I learned spellings and did all my homework. I did not waste a moment at home. I learnt my lessons word for word that it was like they were recorded on a tape recorder.”
By the end of grade seven, she was on top of her class, which did not please her classmates but her family was very proud. Her brothers in Denmark sent her gifts.
At school functions, Taqwa became the announcer. In class eight she started to write poetry in Dari and Pashtu; also, short essays for the school newspaper. In grade nine she was again the class topper. “The whole high school knew me. The Ministry of Education gave me appreciation letters and gifts.”
She moved to Afshar girls’ school, where she started learning English as a language. On graduating she applied for medicine, which was her first option, and literature her second option in the university admission exam. She made it to the faculty of literature.
By her fourth year she was studying and working as assistant chief editor of Pizwan magazine published by the women’s affairs presidency of Maidan Wardak province. She also started work as a narrator with Spogmai (moon) radio. In 2011 she graduated from university, and two years later got a masters degree. She wanted to become a university lecturer but failed to clear the exam in the first attempt.
“My goal is to become a university lecturer, and study till I get a doctorate.”
Currently she is working also for Gurbat TV, and with an Afghan NGO called Coar (Coordination of Afghan Relief) where she is the head of radio and TV. “The post was very demanding and tough but my colleagues encouraged me and I learned gradually – planning, budgeting and other duties.”
She now represents COAR at meetings here, and also has travelled to Dubai.
A published poet, she would like to run for the Maidan Wardak provincial council but she knows it may not be realistic. She would like to fight for the rights of Afghan girls and women.
